Singing in the Lonely Mountains

A Concert by Ensemble Utopik

Leaves through the Bells

—— A Concert by Ensemble Utopik

Friday, May 24, 2019, at 19:30

Opera and Concert Hall of the Central Conservatory of Music

1. ZHONG Juncheng  

Singing in the Lonely Mountains for clarinet and piano(2015) 08’

2. Edith Canat de Chizy

In Blue and Gold for viola and piano (2005)  08’

3. Pascal Dusapin  

Ohé for bass clarinet and violoncello (1996)  10’

4. XIA Zhining  

The Elegant Shadow for flute, clarinet, piano, violin and violoncello (2017)  06’

------Intermission------

5. Thierry Pécou  

Manoa for bass flute, bass clarinet and violoncello (2005)  11’

6. Tristan Murail 

Leaves through the Bells for flute, piano, violin and violoncello (1998)  07’

7. Claire-Mélanie Sinnhuber   

Tracasseriesfor flute, clarinet, violin, violoncello and piano (2006)  06’

Ensemble Utopik

Ensemble Utopik was created in 2004 by six musicians Michel Bourcier, conductor, Marie-Violaine Cadoret, violin and viola, Ludovic Frochot, piano, Michel Grizard, guitar, Hédy Rejiba, percussions and Gilles de Talhouët, flute, keen to explore and bring to life contemporary music repertoire.

The Utopik Ensemble has been invited in many international festivals in France, Italy, Germany, Azerbaidjan and China.

From Pierre Boulez to Steve Reich and Arnold Schönberg to Pascal Dusapin, Xiaogang Ye or Tristan Murail, its repertoire is not focused only on one esthetic but covers multiple contemporary musical langages in variable chamber music configurations which extends up to twenty musicians.

As well as great 20th centuries classics (P. Boulez’s « Le Marteau sans maître », A. Schönberg’s « Pierrot lunaire », G. Ligeti’s Kammerkonzert), Ensemble Utopik performs todays creations and since 2004, has invited in residence in Nantes more than thirty compositors:

Thierry Pécou, Florentine Mulsant, Philippe Hersant, Michaël Levinas, Alexandros Markéas (Greece), Betsy Jolas, Edith Canat de Chizy, Philippe Leroux, Martin Matalon, Gilbert Amy, Kaija Saariaho (Finland), Jérôme Combier, Claire-Mélanie Sinnhuber, Tristan Murail, Valéry Aubertin, Franghiz Ali-Zadeh (Azerbaïdjan), Philippe Hurel, Ana Lara (Mexico), Lionel Bord, Pascal Dusapin, Raphaël Cendo, Elena Mendoza (Spain), Elvio Cipollone (Italy), Arturo Gervasoni (Argentina), Gérard Pesson, Ye Xiaogang (China), Georgina Gerbez and Carlos Gutierrez (Mexico), Elena Tulve (Estonia), Panayiotis Kokoras (Greece), Allain Gaussin.

These residences represent an important part of Utopik’s activity. Each one week residence is organized three times a year and is dedicated to one guest composer: it consists of concerts, conferences, debates and cultural mediation with very different kind of publics. This gives the audience the opportunity to get a greater understanding of 20th and 21st century masterpieces and composers.

Composers (occording to the repertoire order)

ZhongJuncheng

ZhongJuncheng, professor of Guangxi Arts University, China,outstanding teacher, Artistic Director of China-ASEAN music Festival. He has completed more than 80 pieces of symphony and chamber music, including opera ‘Lingqu Canal of the Qin Dynasty’, the first symphony ‘The Land of of the Zhuang nationality ’, ‘The Second Symphony’, ‘The Third Symphony’, the fourth symphony ‘New Life’,the fifth symphony ‘China’s destiny’,the sixth symphony ‘Ai Ge Ai Wa’, “Chen I”, the seventh symphony ‘Chen I’,the eighth symphony ‘Chen III’, the ninth symphony ‘War and Peace’ etc. Many of his works have gained the national level and provincial level reward ,and performed all over the world by symphony orchestras and chamber music orchestras from France, Australia, Israel, America, Poland and ASEAN. As the founder and artistic director ,he has held successfully seventh session China-ASEAN Music Festival.

Singing in the Empty Mountains 

Into the deep mountains, bright sunshine and fresh air. The mountains in guangxi are even more special and can always make people feel the music of guangxi ethnic minorities. A spirit of popularity and purification of the body and mind of the energy, let you understand the guangxi minority life pursuit and the source of culture, national spirit and national music with the mountains.

Edith Canat de Chizy

After studying violin and getting a degree in archeology and philosophy from Paris Sorbonne University, Edith Canat de Chizy continued her musical studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris where she successively obtains the first prizes of harmony, fugue, counterpoint, analysis, orchestration and composition. She learned electroacoustics with Guy Reibel at the same Conservatoire, as well as within the Musical Research Group. 

Pupil of Ivo Malec, she met Maurice Ohana in 1983, who had a great influence on her work. 
She was commissioned by the most famous orchestras (Radio-France National Orchestra, BBC Philharmonic) 
Edith Canat de Chizy received many international composition awards. She received the National Order of Merit in 2003, was the first female composer to be received at the Institut de France, and was elected to the Academy of Fine Arts in 2005. In January 2008, she got the very prestigious french distinction « Chevalier of the Legion of Honor ».

« In Blue and Gold » 

This piece is an extension of my reflection on the relationship painting- music. The title is indeed from a painting by Whistler « Nocturne in blue and gold: Southampton Bay », one of his series of "Nocturnes" that Debussy particularly admired. The allusion to Debussy is here voluntary: "A nocturnal is first of all an arrangement of lines, shapes and colors", said Whistler corresponds to Debussy’s freedom of form, freedom of which we are the happy heirs. 

This composition is particularly focused on the expression of movement: Hence the mirror structure of this piece from motionless to motion and movement to motionless.

Pascal Dusapin

After studying visual arts, he attended Olivier Messiaen's classes and then follows the composition seminars of Iannis Xenakis between 1974 and 1978, a composer whom he considers his master. From 1981 to 1983, He is a resident of Villa Medicis in Rome.

Since then, he has composed nearly a hundred work: he has written for solo instrument, for small or large ensemble, for orchestra, for chorus, composing six operas, two oratorios, numerous string quartets, and studies for solo piano. He has also composed film music. He loves poetry, jazz and dance and mixes genres by putting in his music all these influences coming from other artistic forms.

Today, Pascal Dusapin is one of the best-known and most internationally- known French composers, and his works have been created by the most prestigious ensembles and soloists, such as the Scala Philharmonic Orchestra. Milan, the Arditti Quartet, and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Simon Rattle.
During his career, he has been distinguished by numerous prizes and awards.

«Ohé»

refers to the cry of the sailors, interjection and joyous onomatopoeia, which crosses centuries and civilizations !

Xia Zhining

Xia Zhining has learned Yangqin, a national musical instrument at his young age, and then learned piano and composition. In 2003, he was admitted to Central Conservatory of Music Middle School, under the guidance of Vice Professor Zou Hang. Then, he was admitted to the Central Conservatory of Music in 2009 and studied under Professor Ye Xiaogang and Professor Qin Wenchen. By virtue of his excellent performance, in 2013, he was exempted from the postgraduate entrance examination of the Central Conservatory of Music, he majoring in composition, graduated from the Composition Department of the Central Conservatory of Music in 2017.

His piano solo work Xiangyun won the Finalist of Chinese Music Golden Bell Award. The work of Chamber music Yin - Double-sided Embroidery won the special nomination prize of IBLA Music Competition. The Chamber music Deserted Courtyard was performed in the National Grand Theatre. The symphony Seven Colors Violet was given an opportunity to be performed as one of graduate students' excellent graduation works. He accepted the commission to compile the song Image Collection for Li Le's solo concert of bamboo flute, which was performed in Tianjin Grand Theatre.

The Elegant Shadow  for flute, clarinet, violin, cello and piano (2017) 5’40”

“Yi”, a Chinses character, means elegance and detachment. Affected by the culture of chivalrous conducts, the music shows the swordsman's shifting movement, agile changeable posture and free state with self-restraint soul and flesh. The music strives for conciseness, elegance and more than words. Starting with minimal material and rhythm, the initial music rhythm interpenetrates and changes between the voice parts of each instrument from beginning to end.

Thierry Pécou 

Born in 1965 in Paris, Thierry Pécou studied at the Paris National Conservatory, where he won First Prizes in Orchestration and Composition. Regularly appointed for residencies around the world, Pécou has had a long- standing relationship with the Banff Center in Canada where he has often been in residence. He was also a member of the Casa de Velazquez in Madrid and in residence in Russia, as part of the Villa Médicis Hors Les Murs Prize, and has made his extensive travel a source of inspiration for his music. 

He wrote over 80 performed works, most often commissions of higly prestigious institutions, are interpreted by world-class soloists and orchestras (e.g. Kronos Quartet, pianist Alexandre Tharaud, BBC Symphony Orchestra), furthermore played at well-renowned concerts’seasons and festivals; such as the Radio-France’festivals Présences, Gaudeamus Music- Week in Amsterdam, Automn in Moscow, New Music Concerts Toronto, Foro Internacional de Musica Nueva de Mexico, Festival d'Ambronay, Tampere Choir Festival (Finland), Auditorium de Nagasaki, Théâtre de la Ville and des Champs Elysées in Paris. 

One of his piece involving Chinese traditional instruments, commissioned by the GRAME, has been premiered at the World Exposition in Shanghai in 2010.

« Manoa» 

“For centuries, the mythic Amazonian city of Manoa has kept its secrets hidden from the many explorers who have zealously sought to find even a trace of its existence. Built upon the question-and-answer motif of the songs of the Goahibo, an indigenous culture of the Oronoco, the score calls for the instrumentalists to move, particularly the flutist and clarinetist, linking the intertwined instrumental game with the body game of the native cultures. Anchor to the earth, beacon from space, spiral movements, alternating steps, the piece is a dance whose music unfolds like the undulating leaves of a Mayan codez.”

Tristan Murail

Born in Le Havre in 1947, Tristan Murail received advanced degrees in classical and North African Arabic as well as a degree in economic science. In 1967, he became a student of Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatory, while studying Political Sciences in Paris. In 1971, he was awarded the Prix de Rome, and later received a First Prize in composition from the Paris Conservatory. He spent the next two years in Rome, at the Villa Medicis.

In 1973, he co-founded the Ensemble « L’Itineraire » with a group of young composers and instrumentalists.

In the 1980s, Tristan Murail used computer technology to further his research in the analysis and synthesis of acoustic phenomena.

In 1997, Tristan Murail was named professor of composition at Columbia University in New York, teaching there until 2010.

He continued giving master-classes and seminars all over the world, was guest professor at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg for three years, and is currently guest professor at the Shanghai Conservatory.

« Leaves through the bells »

As suggested by the explicit reference to the first piece of volume II of Debussy's Images for piano, Cloches à travers les feuilles, of which it inverts not only the title but also the musical intent, Feuilles à travers les cloches (Leaves through the bells) is based on the articulation of two planes that are brought to interact on each other. The bells (piano chords, sometimes reinforced by other attacks, systematically combined with the violin pizzicati in relation to microtonal intervals with the piano) and the foliage (sounds in flatterzunge, more diffuse sounds suggesting rustlings), correspond respectively to a foreground and a background whose relationship will be progressively modified. This sound universe in which resonance predominates - the piano is used without dampers - refers directly to the Debussy piano but, more generally, to an aesthetic making Nature a source of ideal inspiration. The lesson according to which "nothing is more musical than a sunset" seems to have inspired Murail.

Claire-Mélanie Sinnhuber 

Born in 1973 in Strasbourg, Claire-Mélanie Sinnhuber is a French-Swiss national.
After studying flute with Patrice Bocquillon, she studied composition with Sergio Ortega, Allain Gaussin, Ivan Fedele, Philippe Leroux and Frederic Durieux.

She is a graduate of the Conservatoire de Paris and has followed the annual course of composition and new technologies of IRCAM.

Her music is played in France and abroad, by ensembles such as Aleph, Accroche Note, Contrechamps, Short Circuit, Cairn, Hic and Nunc, the Instant Donné, Insomnio, Multilateral, the new ensemble Modern, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra, Vortex, the Geneva Chamber Orchestra, Clément Janequin Ensemble, in particular at IRCAM, Musica, Manca, Royaumont Abbey, Forum Neues Musiktheater, Gaudeamus, MaerzMusik, Ars Musica, Why Note, Suntory Summer Festival, Archipelago.

She won the Francis and Mica Salabert Award in 2006, the SACEM Georges Enesco Composition Prize in 2007, and the SACEM Hervé Dugardin Award in 2017.

She was a laureate of Villa Kujoyama in 2008 and was a resident of Villa Medici from 2010 to 2011.

« Tracasseries »

This very playful piece is based on different instrumental techniques:
each musician performs simple actions, his gesture questioning the object- instrument, with the hand, the breath, the bow...
The title is quiet hard to translate. Tracasseries could be understood as hassles or vexations but more in the way Eric Satie understood it, with lightness and humour.
It is indeed a very delightful piece, full of energy, tricks and jokes!